Clamps are used extensively to temporarily locate sheet metal parts during the fabrication of sheet metal parts, usually by spot welding, into vehicle bodies or body subassemblies. Clamps are typically specific to one vehicle body style and to one location on that body style. Thus due to variations in external sheet metal, the same clamp cannot be used on a broad range of vehicle bodies even when general similarities exist between them. Thus the number of vehicle body variants which can be fabricated on a particular body assembly line is restricted.
A reconfigurable clamp, capable of rapidly adapting to differing body configurations, increases the number of body variants which can be fabricated on a particular body assembly line and therefore increases the versatility of the body assembly line.